The picture below made me start playing a word game in my mind.
What words can be created by adding new letters?
Some possible answers are beneath the photo. But before you look, play the game yourself!
Then the thought dawned on me that each answer to the puzzle creates a story, in and of itself. The potential for a short story of your own is ripe for creation.
See my 300-word attempt below. If you post your story in the comments, please keep it under 1,000 words. 🙂
Photo by Josef Hoflehner
Possible answers:
MONEY
MOVED
MOTEL
MOPEY
MOVER
MOWED
MOSES
______________
The Roadside Riddle by Steve Laube
The sign had been meant to say “MOTEL.” Everyone knew that, even now, years after the T and the L had vanished, leaving the word stranded as a riddle posted against a bleak landscape.
People used to stop there when the motel was still open. Then the recession came, the bank closed, and the school consolidated with a town fifteen miles away. One by one, the lights went dark.
The owner had meant to replace the missing letters right away. He’d even stacked them in his garage. But life has a way of postponing such things until they no longer matter. Eventually, it was too late. All that was left was an empty building and a sign that no longer explained itself.
Children growing up afterward made games of it. They guessed what other words would fit. “MONEY,” someone would say. “MOSES,” said another, squinting at it as if it were an epiphany. Teenagers took photos beneath it, pretending to hold up the missing letters with their hands, laughing as if the joke were new. “MOWED” was popular in summer. “MOPEY” added an eighth name to the collection of Snow White’s dwarfs.
But to those who remembered, the missing letters suggested the town had “MOVED.” Moved past its promise and now the decrepit sign served as a form of apology: “Sorry. We existed once, and we cared enough to leave a note.”
Travelers still slow down there sometimes, uncertain. They see the sign, hesitate, and glance toward the decaying shell of a building next to the thin road. There’s nothing to see, but ahead lie many miles of quiet and the echo of something that used to be.
Such can be the melancholy of memory. One can let its shadow settle and mourn what has already gone. Or one can wistfully smile at the recollection and look ahead to the promise of a new day, a new adventure, a new sunrise.
